Investment Banker's Little Bond Fund Goes Nationwide for Immigrants

Massachusetts investment banker and philanthropist Robert Hildreth's success in business means Luis Delgado, a Mexican immigrant arrested in an immigration crackdown on a Maryland roofing company June 30, will get to be with his wife and children for the months it will take his legal case to be adjudicated.

The two men didn't meet until Aug. 11, though Hildreth's money helped pay the $2,500 bond that has enabled Delgado to stay out of detention pending the resolution of his immigration prosecution.

Hildreth's offer to help pay a few immigrants' bonds after a raid in 2001 has now led to the creation of a national fund to help other people facing detention far from their homes and families.

His concern for families separated after a major immigration raid in New Bedford, Mass., last year led Hildreth to start writing checks so some of those factory workers wouldn't have to wait in detention centers thousands of miles away while their cases were heard.

Hundreds of workers arrested at the New Bedford textile factory were shipped to detention centers in Texas within two days of the raid.

At an Aug. 11 press conference at Casa de Maryland, an immigrant community services center in Silver Spring, Hildreth explained that the little project he started last year has cost him more than $200,000. Now Delgado and 100 or so people around the country can thank Hildreth for starting what has become the National Immigrant Bond Fund.

In announcing the bond fund, Don Kerwin, director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, known as CLINIC, said three bishops so far have endorsed the effort and serve with him on the fund's committee. They include Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Calif., CLINIC board chairman, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, Fla.

Community agencies such as the diocesan affiliates of CLINIC will be the conduit for money from the bond fund, which is provided on a matching basis, with families required to put up half the cost. When money is repaid as cases are resolved, the funds go back into the pool to help future applicants.